To Federate or not to Federate: is this the Fediverse’s Don’t be Evil-Moment or its own Liberation through transfiguration? And why is the current political Left in wide parts unable to answer this…
Maybe. But that’s a big maybe. It could equally be that Threads becomes the most powerful entity on the Fediverse and what they do becomes law (like shutting off a certain instance).
Yea the other part of my reasoning is to try and prevent them from getting to that point.
The short version of which is that our biggest selling point is “Join Mastodon, you can see all the same content and do the same things, but it’s run by a non-profit instead of Facebook”. Defederation means we lose that point, and it’s going to be very difficult for Mastodon to compete with the money and manpower that facebook has.
“Join Mastodon to see content that you can’t see otherwise” will have a much harder time competing with “Join Threads to see content that you can’t see otherwise”
In principle, yes. But if 99% of users are on one server, then that server has a disproportional amount of power in the network. If they choose to defederate another server, it’s essentially a death sentence.
That makes absolutely no sense. If they choose to defederate then it is no different than if they had never federated in the first place, which is what it sounds like you want.
What server are you referring to? Threads? They already have 99.9%. No one is going to join Threads because it’s “the biggest server”, they’re going to join because they’ve never heard of the Fediverse and want to chat with their friends and follow businesses and personalities.
If they know what the Fediverse is, they’re not going to join Threads, because no fully-informed person is going to make that decision.
That is not really true and anyone who actually believes that is in for a rude awakening.
See I think that you’re a bit confused because when they say that or things similar to that what they really mean is that no one person controls the fediverse. Not that there are no laws or rules because they’re absolutely are.
For example if you go around spouting bigotry you will find yourself banned from a majority of public federated servers, and if you are on a server that you are not the owner of you will likely find yourself banned from that one.
The fact that it’s decentralized does not mean that it doesn’t have rules or is some kind of free speech safe haven.
Maybe. But that’s a big maybe. It could equally be that Threads becomes the most powerful entity on the Fediverse and what they do becomes law (like shutting off a certain instance).
Yea the other part of my reasoning is to try and prevent them from getting to that point.
The short version of which is that our biggest selling point is “Join Mastodon, you can see all the same content and do the same things, but it’s run by a non-profit instead of Facebook”. Defederation means we lose that point, and it’s going to be very difficult for Mastodon to compete with the money and manpower that facebook has.
“Join Mastodon to see content that you can’t see otherwise” will have a much harder time competing with “Join Threads to see content that you can’t see otherwise”
The Fediverse has no law. No one controls it.
In principle, yes. But if 99% of users are on one server, then that server has a disproportional amount of power in the network. If they choose to defederate another server, it’s essentially a death sentence.
Only if the users on that server treat it like a death sentence.
Most users would probably jump away from that server in that case, so in all likelihood they would.
That makes absolutely no sense. If they choose to defederate then it is no different than if they had never federated in the first place, which is what it sounds like you want.
It is different because if we defederate in the first place, then perhaps 99% of users would not congregate in that server.
What server are you referring to? Threads? They already have 99.9%. No one is going to join Threads because it’s “the biggest server”, they’re going to join because they’ve never heard of the Fediverse and want to chat with their friends and follow businesses and personalities.
If they know what the Fediverse is, they’re not going to join Threads, because no fully-informed person is going to make that decision.
That is not really true and anyone who actually believes that is in for a rude awakening.
See I think that you’re a bit confused because when they say that or things similar to that what they really mean is that no one person controls the fediverse. Not that there are no laws or rules because they’re absolutely are.
For example if you go around spouting bigotry you will find yourself banned from a majority of public federated servers, and if you are on a server that you are not the owner of you will likely find yourself banned from that one. The fact that it’s decentralized does not mean that it doesn’t have rules or is some kind of free speech safe haven.
XMPP hadn’t, until google put his hands on it.